Power of Peer Tutoring Blog

At the beginning of the year we had all feared even the thought of it, but now it was really here. The Advanced Placement Biology midterm dawned just 3 weeks away from all of the anxious students. “Plasmodesmata, Signal Transduction Pathways, Golgi Apparatuses!” I heard students panicking in the hallways while screaming forgotten terminology. I had been enrolled through the guidance department as a peer tutor and often helped students in foreign languages, math, and science. A few days later, my AP Biology teacher had personally requested for me to help a fellow student prepare for the upcoming test. Meeting for the first time after school for 2 hours on a Friday, the student and I traveled back in time to the very first unit of the school year: Biomolecules. Something I rely on as a tutor is how I can explain complex topics as a situation that a student would understand, usually by the use of analogies. I pondered in my head for a few moments, “How can I explain protein folding as something that doesn’t even involve proteins?” Suddenly I realized, who knows more about long lunch lines than a high school student? The student, although a little confused why I was suddenly asking her about her lunch time habits, told me that she always stood in the lunch line. I asked her to imagine that the people in the lunch line were each a different amino acid, the small units that make up a protein. The primary level of protein folding has to do with the arrangement of people in the lunch line. Then, say you are towards the back of the line and you notice your friend somewhere around the middle. You wave hello and call out to your friend sparking a conversation. Naturally you want to move closer to your friend so, the line begins to curve depicting the secondary level of protein folding. Once, the line starts to bend and curve, more students start having conversations, or creating bonds, between them. Now having interactions between several people in the lunch line, the structure is now at its tertiary level of folding. You notice another friend in the other lunch line, and you want to bring them into your conversation as well. Now, not only do you have a protein in the quaternary level, but also a very big blob of unorganized lunch lines. Applying what we have learned in class to concepts and examples that students can relate to in their daily life, makes topics easier to understand. I encourage students to create their own analogies to explain ideas that they may struggle with. Being a track star, the student applied her understanding of energy maintenance to create analogies to help them remember the differences between endergonic and exergonic reactions. This way, students are not trying to memorize definitions of concepts that they do not understand. Creating connections between the academic world and their personal lives and previous knowledge can help them to remember and fully comprehend ideas. Many people believe that when you are a tutor, you just have to tell people how to do things. Being a tutor does not mean providing another student with all the answers, it means helping them to find the answers themselves. After receiving her midterm grade back, the student came running into the guidance office and with the biggest smile on her face told me that they had scored their highest grade all year in biology. This was one of the most incredible moments because, not only have you helped a student with their immediate challenges, but you have helped them realize how they can help themselves in the future.